


For When I lose my Mind

by blueblood (sangreazul)



Series: chartered lives [5]
Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Drabble, Drabble Collection, Enemies to Lovers, Falling In Love, Fluff, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, M/M, Prose Poem, Valentine's Day Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 06:40:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29397798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sangreazul/pseuds/blueblood
Summary: A handguide to falling accidentally in love with Nathan Drake, by Rafe Adler.***at the end of the day, when he was lying next to him in the cotton sheets, gently humming and combing his fingers through his messy hair, he trusted the universe because, through everything, it had brought him nate..RED.
Relationships: Rafe Adler/Nathan Drake
Series: chartered lives [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2098251
Kudos: 7





	1. pretty

**Author's Note:**

> i've been accidentally doing soft stuff for valentines day iwrojkgndf but i just love these two so much and i miss writing prose because its easy and fun so boom here u go a lil collection of nate/rafe being soft and in love.....
> 
> posting this because this ship deserves more attention..............

Somehow he managed to say everything he possibly wanted to hear. Nate was standing in the doorway of his office, face flushed from the cold, breath coming out slightly too heavy. Rafe had turned around in his chair and eyed him as he walked in from the hallway. The work could wait. There was a smile at the corners of his mouth and all over his eyes.   
“What?” He made the trepidation clear in his voice. He’d been working for hours, sitting in the same position, typing, muttering, building frustration and running his hands purposefully through his hair.   
Nate looked at him in silence for a few moments more before answering him. “You look pretty.” And it was so simple and easy as if he meant nothing more in his life than that statement. He had a way of looking at him, pale blue eyes and cracked lips, unkempt eyebrows and scattered stubble on his cheeks, that made Rafe’s heart stop. Like he hurt his eyes in small fragmented amounts, like he wanted the lava to flood through him.   
“Shut up.” Was all Rafe could say, the lie just as easy on his tongue. He didn’t want it to stop.


	2. friends

Their friends. He’d been accepted somewhat quickly into the little group of misfits he unfortunately called his friends. If he was honest, he’d never had friends before, let alone an entire group. It was fascinating and terrifying and there was only so much he could take at times. Nate enjoyed people, company (that was something he would realise a few months later, one still evening); he would bubble and fizz and watch as his energy coarse through everyone else’s veins and grin. Childish, silly. Rafe would sit with Nadine mainly, both of them feeling almost as outcast as the other, sitting with straight backs and poised shoulders. Sitting with firm faces and lowered eyebrows. Nate didn’t sit. But then Rafe watched as Nadine and Chloe shared soft glances and gentle whispers or Sam made a ridiculous joke and she stifled a laugh. And he suddenly felt very alone again.

“Get me water?” He asked, a glimmer of hope in his voice, as the trek to the kitchen was laden with various people in the hallway and Rafe preferred to stick to the door. And Nate, warmth on his cheeks and one or two beers in him, went and came back. Rafe liked how familiar it felt. He liked how it looked to everyone else. 

As Nate drifted away again, immediately interwoven with the delicate threads of his relationships, Rafe found himself lost. When the feeling became too overwhelming, he looked for him and he was almost always staring. Rafe liked the way it felt, the person he was looking for looking back.

It was later and the air was much cooler. Everyone had gathered in the living room, tipsy not drunk, but sometimes Rafe couldn’t tell the difference. He watched Nate come out to greet him in the hallway, half hoping he’d take his hand and they’d hide together where no one would find them.   
“I don’t want to go in yet. Will you stay with me?” He asked, feeling each word as it fell from his lips. The glow from the lights inside the room was reflecting on his face. And Nate smiled Rafe’s favourite smile, with a little laugh in it.  
“What are you doing to me?” he said, a little light-headed with blush dusting his cheeks. “You know I’ll go wherever you ask me to.”

Rafe did know. But knowing and hearing him saying it were two different things.


	3. the moment

And the moment he knew he was a goner, that he was lost in the water, because it somehow felt peaceful to be all that way down, that was it: too late to be early and too early to be late. He was placing Nate’s head on his lap and feeling as he shivered under his fingertips when he ran them through his hair and down his neck. Nate opened his eyes and looked up at him and his face said something incredible and irreversible and Rafe felt his stomach drop. He was done for, he thought, he already had him.

And as he looked, he felt suddenly everything, slowly everything, then nothing at all.


	4. first kiss (nearly)

They were in Nate’s room; the gentle sound of the waves washing over the shore a few feet from them, sunset melting through the cotton curtains. 

He hadn’t realised the day had gone until the orange glow was painted onto Nate’s face a few metres away from him. He’d got a text that read “what are you doing right now? today?” and so he had come over. It was simple and obvious. They had sat down cross-legged on the living room floor, a white, leather journal between them and he had nearly cried over a life he hadn’t experienced.

There were many reasons for them to keep their distance: Avery, the group he had become a part of, Nate’s serial dating and their trust issues. People who might not have liked it, might have said it was too soon or too fast or too much of a change. Rafe agreed with it all. They weren’t friends.

He watched Nate’s mouth move as he talked, of something brilliant and exciting and scary and bold. The urge came upon him quickly, a sudden jolt, a reminder of reality, and he wanted to so badly. He yearned to press his pink lips against Nate’s broken ones. Then Nate glanced up and met his eyes and somehow grew warmer, smiled more subconsciously. And Rafe tugged at his lip with his teeth and relief and disappointment washed over him in waves. He was stuck in awe, unable to do anything but gaze as Nate continued to talk. He was his obsession.


	5. second kiss (nearly)

They were in Nate’s car, parked outside Sully’s house. They were staring at each other like they were 20 again and full of rage and tension. He was magnetised to him, drawn so easily to his very being. Something passed over Nate’s face, and Rafe could’ve asked him what it was, but he didn’t because he felt it too. His eyebrows raised slightly. His breath hitched as he inhaled as he was going to say something big. 

Rafe placed a hand on his cheek and he was pulled by the strongest force, the widest gap, the closest person. That wasn’t normal, he had thought; it wasn’t normal to look at him and feel the magnet in his gut, his heartbeat in his ears. He wasn’t supposed to want so much more.

That was when he thought Nate was going to kiss him, but he didn’t. He got out of the car and Rafe muttered something about being in in a minute. As Rafe watched Nate walk down the driveway from the passenger seat he had adjusted months before, he thought of all the times Nate had leant against his car with a boy. With a girl. With someone else, someone new each time. He wondered how many times he leant down and planted a kiss on their lips without any difficulty or complication. He wondered how many of them were now good friends. Were the people he hung out with. Then he got out of the car, locked it, and made his way over to the door.

He wanted him to. By god, he wanted him to.


	6. red eyes

He didn’t think Nate cried a lot; he seemed so confident, so ever-optimistic and so opposed to being anything other than witty and fun. Which Rafe didn’t mind, but he wondered how many of the others had seen him broken like he allowed himself to be around him. 

Rafe loved every moment with him. When he was sleeping and when he was upset and when he showed up at his door without warning or when he asked for his input in some new discovery. What they had was so infinite, so big. It frightened him.

And there he was, the night of the sixteenth anniversary of Sam’s death, with tears rimming his red eyes; it had become a rather unfitting title for the date. He’d spent the day acting just off normal and Rafe monitored his gravitation towards the beer in the fridge and avoidance of food. Then he sat down on the sofa next to him, just gone 9pm, turned to him, and began to laugh. Then cry. And he couldn’t stop. He was in so much pain over the pain someone else left him with and it was gorgeous to look at and sent a knife into his gut at the same time. He felt himself reach what should have been his breaking point - where he was meant to get angry or hurt, but it never erupted. Instead, he placed his head on his chest and held it tightly. He was lucky to be the one who held him through it. He thought, he would be whatever he needed.

That was infinite.


	7. first kiss

He knocked on his door at midnight, and Rafe opened it wearing one of his t-shirts and a pair of old sweatpants Nate had left over the last time he had stayed the night. His hair was falling over his face. Nate had a few drinks in him and looked insanely happy to see him - like all the energy in the world was pointed directly at Rafe when he stared. It was incredible. 

Rafe patted the seat beside him. “Come here.” And Nate did.

He let him boss him around; drink this water, sit here, eat that, turn that song down. He let him without any hints of annoyance, like his demands were just tiny favours for him.

“Stop making that face!” Rafe said.  
“What face?” Nate smiled, slowly.  
“The one,” he said as if it were obvious. “The one you do that’s like ‘I can’t believe this is happening to me’.”  
His eyebrows turned up with a slight crease in the middle and his nose scrunched a little. And a smile on his face, his sideways one.   
He spoke, softly, “Well, that’s because I can’t believe this is happening to me.”

Later on, Rafe would remember their first kiss the way he would remember dreams - he had to hold onto the haziness around the edges.

“I really want to kiss you.” Rafe mumbled. Was he dreaming? Was he dreaming?  
“Well,” Nate smirked, eyes focused solely on him alone. “What are you going to do about it then?” He laughed a little at his boldness, but it was caught by the corner of his mouth when he leant in.

He remembered the moment his crush on him exploded in his head. Nate, on the same sofa he was then, a journal on his lap and a small, china elephant. It wasn’t anything either of them hadn’t seen before, the story that came along with it was the same. He really shouldn’t have cared. But the mix of how he could tell he was half embarrassed, half enjoying himself.. he couldn’t stand it.

Rafe had every feeling for him all in one and the knowledge that he wanted him appeared before him so clearly, so vividly, it surprised him. He didn’t think he could feel so much so instantaneously. And maybe it had been building, maybe it had been a long time coming, but that wasn’t how it felt when he looked at him in that exact moment. Watching him gesticulate as he spoke. When every inch that was separating them was breaking his heart just a little. He wanted him. Simple, awful. Complicated. True.

The first kiss exploded very much like that - a jolt, a sudden awakening, a realisation through his stomach, in his lungs, then warmth and clarity. He wanted that. He wanted him. Simple. Awful. Complicated. True.


	8. questions?

It had been two months of late, late nights and Rafe staring at his lips while he was talking and not knowing if he was his, was he his? But he was asking him to get him to get him drinks at gatherings and Nate put his hand on his knee in front of everyone and he could feel everyone staring at them, but he couldn’t see because he couldn’t tear his eyes away from his mouth and the way his tongue rested, the way his teeth were slightly crooked. How he wanted to feel all of his thoughts pass across his face as they kissed.

How he wanted them to kiss and never stop kissing, but he also missed the energy just before all of it. It was nearly normal two months later; Nate kissed him goodbye and hello with such familiarity, it astounded him. Nothing felt that strange. But there was still a little echo of how it was before, when he was still just something he wanted so badly he couldn’t catch a breath.

He’d lost track of kisses and times Nate had fallen asleep with Rafe on his chest, lying on the sofa.

It was easy and sometimes it was too easy and something beyond them both came along to make it difficult. But then, even then, with them sitting on the floor, lost and broken, it was easy. Rafe thought it was easy to go through something hard with Nate.


	9. first i love you (nearly)

The first time he thought he loved him was months in. He had known it for a while before, but it was summer when he allowed himself to admit it. With them, time moved differently, but it was still faster than he had meant it to be.

It was early morning, he was standing in the bathroom, drying his hair after a shower and caught sight of Nate’s shirt he’d slept in on the side. It felt too good to keep a secret.

But some secrets were good to keep.


	10. panic attack

Rafe curled around him and tried to help him calm the storm. It was thundering in Nate’s mind and Rafe couldn’t keep him warm, he couldn’t keep him safe, but he was trying to protect him. His hands were moving in a way he wasn’t used to, so he took his face in his palms and said, “You’re panicking.” It was a familiar feeling. He said he was okay, over and over, when Nate asked him, although he wasn’t too sure. All he knew was that he hated to see him hurting and hated to feel him so far away.

Rafe saw the moment he came back. His eyes became his again and he looked at him, sheepishly and numb and frightened. He could reach him. So he reached out and did. He held on perhaps a little tighter, a little harder, then. Maybe he was scared a bit too. He had never gone away before.

He waited for the part where Nate was done, where he would go away and never come back. But he did come back, he came back and back, and he asked if he was alright a thousand times through his own tears. And it was his pain that Rafe was focused on - he couldn’t believe he was choosing to think of him at all. He lay on his chest and listened to his heartbeat that night.

He trusted him to come back.


	11. first i love you

They were watching the sunset over the beach from the front of Nate’s car and he was eating fries, the windows were down, and he was talking through a mouth full about something Rafe had stopped listening to, when he first said that he loved him. Nate stopped talking, stayed frozen in motion for moments that felt like hours and Rafe wanted to crawl out of the window and lie on the road behind them. He then swallowed frantically and looked at him.   
“What?” But it was out there. He loved him. “Well, I love you too.”

Sometimes it felt too good to be real. It felt like they were both making it all up.

Happiness was bigger and better, more infinite, with him.


End file.
